Career Foxy Plays The Percentage Game - Season 2

[FuddledFox]

 

Foxy Plays The Percentage Game - Introduction

I wanted to set a score for my new challenge I created to hopefully get the ball rolling and set a score for people to beat. You can get more details in the link below but the premise of the challenge is to get one player to score as big a percentage of your teams goals as possible over two seasons.

 

Club and Player Choice

I wanted to play this save in a league that I haven’t played in often but also didn’t have too many games so I could rattle through nice a quickly. I considered Canada but the clubs have no money and very limited options of players that can be signed so in the end I went south and decided the MLS was the place to be.

The clubs in the MLS all have the same transfer budget except for Austin who have no players so that wasn’t a consideration with my club choice. Instead my choice was based solely on one factor and that was the club that had a player I liked the look of as not needing to sign a striker would save some money to improve the squad I inherit.

The player I choose was Josef Martinez who’s smouldering look in his picture really lured me in as he looks like he really means business and whatever that business is he will go about it in a broodingly sexy kind of way. At 27 he is at his peak, he has a nice long contract and looks a good player. I also wanted to avoid a TM type player as its become a habit of mine to pick a player with very good aerial and it’s nice to do something different and look for different tactical solutions.

That means I will be managing Atlanta Utd who I know very little about apart from the fact they won the league a couple of years ago so I’m guessing the squad is decent and Newcastle signed Almiron from them just after.

 The Plan

My aim with this challenge is to create something that makes us think slightly differently about a goalscorer and that’s what I am trying to do. Obviously in a 1kc we want our striker to score as many goals as he can in the season and that can lead to attacking tactics that can produce lots of team goals but that doesn’t matter if the main man scores loads of goals.

In this challenge it isn’t the total the striker scores that matters but that he scores the majority of the teams goals. So if he scores 30 goals but the team as a whole only scored 50 then it would be a decent result although I need the team to win as well otherwise I might lose my job. This means I need to make a decision, do I go for loads of team goals in the hope that Josef scores most of them or do I play more conservative and try to focus goals just through Josef?

My plan is a mixture of the two as I will be using quite a basic tactic at the start of games that will hopefully focus the goals we get through Josef whilst keeping it tight at the back so we win games. So if I win a game 1-0 and Josef scores it will be better than him scoring once in a 4-0 win so in the 2nd half of games if we are winning and Josef has scored and needs to rest I will be looking to “shut up shop” to get the win but also not actually chase after more goals.

This is a real departure for me as I’m so used to just trying to smash teams and defensive tactics and seeing out games really isn’t something I do that often. That’s why I am looking forward to this challenge though as it’s making me look at tactics, team building and matches themselves in a different way.

It could all go wrong and I have no idea what a good score is but hopefully it will be fun trying. I will be back with Season 1 in a few days and hopefully some more insights into my tactics.

Thanks for reading.

[Rich]

Like the club and player choice, used Martinez a couple of times last year, but yes he’s picked up a very angry looking face this year. Be interesting to follow this one and the way you go about it Fox.

Edited December 22, 2020 by RichD

[broodje kip]

I like the choice of player and club. Good luck!

[Aaron Thornton]

Nice player and club choice mate, the challenge will certainly make most players think differently about their strategy. 

[Rob]

I love this challenge. It’s different to any other in that it makes you think about things a lot more differently than a standard ‘loads of team goals’ tactic that tend to fulfil most of the other challenges to date. 

Best of luck Mr Fox!

[FuddledFox]

Thanks for the comments @RichD @broodje kip @Aaron Thornton and @Rob

[Mr Tree]

Will be interesting to see how you get on Foxy - good luck!

[FuddledFox]

2 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Will be interesting to see how you get on Foxy - good luck!

Thanks Mr (Christmas) Tree.

[smoggy90]

Good luck Foxy, nice challenge and look forward to following your progress.

[Titjes]

Good luck Mr Fox 😄

[samhardy]

Would you say you play the “Percentage Game” often @FuddledFox?

[FuddledFox]

2 hours ago, samhardy said:

Would you say you play the “Percentage Game” often @FuddledFox?

No as I usually play the “What would Bobby do” game.

[Paul186]

good luck Foxy this looks like an interesting challenge.

[FuddledFox]

Season 1

Firstly thanks to @Paul186 for your comment it’s good to have you following along.

Transfers

I let go a few players that were simply dross and although they weren’t on big money there was no point them hanging around. In the end I actually made a few quid out of them to put towards some squad improvements.

 

The squad I inherited was pretty decent but that didn’t stop me adding to it in pretty much every area except up front. My aim was to try and get a solid defence as the less goals I concede the less as a team we need to score and then hopefully the goals we do get will come through Josef.

I also pumped money into some new wingers which may seem strange considering Josef isn’t a TM type player. In my experience you don’t always need a big player up front who can head everything to use wingers as if they are good and the striker you have is quick and intelligent it can prove effective. The other reason is simply I want my wide players to stay wide and not take away too many goals.

Some of the names I bought will be familiar but not all so I have put there profiles under the spoiler if you are interested.

Spoiler

Tactics

The plan was to keep things simple. My main tactic was a 41221 as seen below but I also had a second tactic as well that I switched to when I needed to see games out with Josef off the pitch and I will share that in my season 2 update.

The aim of the tactic is simple and that’s to try and funnel the ball as much as possible in and around the box to Martinez and let him do his magic in front of goal. I considered having Martinez as a P to keep him solely focused on goals but I find the AF role a little more effective these days as a P can become a bit to one dimensional and become marked out of the game especially in a tactic where he doesn’t have a great deal of support close to him.

In midfield it is again focused on support roles and I tried to bring in players that don’t have high shooting so that the BBM and AP are less tempted to take long shots which I guess had mixed success.

At the back I changed to NCB from CB after a couple of matches. It’s not a role I have used very often but we started quite suspect at the back and with the defenders who I have that are good at the basics but not much else I decided to give that role a go. It seemed effective so I stuck with them. I went with FB to again try and keep it tight at the back, concede less and win games without the need for lots of goals. Although they are less adventurous than WB’s they do get forward and will cross and it’s an underrated role in the game in my opinion.

 

The Story of the Season

The start of the season was dominated by midweek games in the North American Champions League which caused problems for team selection as Martinez was struggling to play two games a week meaning he wasn’t on the pitch as much as I wanted.

We won our first round match over two legs against an Honduran team which took us to the Quarter Finals. We played Toronto and won the first leg 2-1 before losing by the same score in the 2nd leg and going out on penalties. Although this meant less midweek games which is probably good for the challenge I don’t like losing games and I wanted to win this trophy.

 

The next bit of silverware to be handed out was the US Cup. A trip to the final would mean playing 5 games and adding in more midweek matches which isn’t so good for maximising Martinez playing time but at least unlike the NACL these were just single leg matches.

We made it all the way to the final but it was heartache again as we lost to Seattle but the blow was cushioned as at least both our goals came from the main man.

 

The main league season was more successful as we won the Supporters Shield quite comfortably. It seemed strange not to be the top scorers in the league but the challenge isn’t about scoring massive amounts of goals and we were pretty decent at the back.

 

We then moved onto the playoffs and first won the Eastern Conference on penalties against New England.

 

Then FuddledFox will have his revenge on Seattle to win the overall MLS Cup.

The Halftime Score

The success on the pitch is ok but the main thing is how did Josef do and what % of the teams goals did he get?

He cracked in just over a goal a game and kept himself pretty fit missing only 5 games over the season.

The team as a whole scored 88 goals in all competitions so we are looking at a % of just over 50%. Looking at my manger attributes anyone would think I give zero ***** about them 🤔

 

So by popping the numbers into https://percentagecalculator.net/ I can see that Josef Martinez current % at the the halfway stage of the challenge is 52%.

 Being the first to do this challenge I have no idea if that’s a good total at the halfway stage or not but what I do know is around the halfway stage of season 1 Josef had scored 58% of the teams goals so he dropped off in the second half of the season.

Due to the number of goals scored now each single Josef goal will effect the % less but hopefully in season 2 he can boost his score a bit more.

Thanks for reading.

 

[broodje kip]

Looking good Foxy. As you’re the first guy I think it’s a great score. 

You’ll have to wait until @RichD attempt it until we can say how good it really is 😂

[Rob]

Great score Furby.

[Paul186]

good start, I'm certain a cracking second season to come.

[FuddledFox]

Season 2

It’s time to get this career wrapped up with the 2nd season of the challenge.

Transfers

I had tried to ship out Barco last season with little success as I have found him a bit greedy but with little success. In the end I got rid of him for a cut price £14m but there is plenty that can be done in the MLS with that kind of money.

 

My business into the club was based around improving the quality of the defence and midfield of the first XI so that the decent players I already had could form the backbone of a good all round squad with two really good XI’s.

Again some of these names might be unfamiliar to you but there is some real gems at the MLS level here so there profiles are under the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

Tactics

In my season 1 update I showed the main setup I had in games but when Josef Martinez went off and I wanted to see the game out without scoring many more goals that he wouldn’t get I went with a much more negative set up.

The main purpose of this tactic was to try and keep the opposition at arms length when they have the ball but then when we have to just play possession football with very little intent to attack. So we just look to slow the game down and pass it around but with very few players making attacking runs it should be much more of a possession for the sake of it style of football.

For the most part this worked very well in limiting the number of goals we scored when Martinez was off the pitch and couldn’t get them. I was helped by having a good squad of players that could beat most teams in this league so I didn’t drop many points when I switched to this style but I doubt this would work if you are a poor team playing a top side.

 

The Story of the Season

In season 1 we crashed out of the NACL in the quarter finals but I was hoping for better this year as the squad was considerably better so I could switch players around to cope with the amount of games whilst still playing well.

We got to the final where we took on Chivas from Mexico and secured back to back 2-0 wins to lift the trophy. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I have ever won the NACL on any version of FM/FMM so I was pleased to get this won.

 

The US Cup was another disappointment last season when we lost to Seattle in the final but we made amends this year with a win over New England after extra time in the final.

I would recommend Adam Buksa if you need a striker in the MLS or similar standard league as he always scored against me when I played NE.

 

In the regular league season we only won the combined league table by a point from Toronto as we dropped a fair few points in the season. Our defence was ridiculously good with just 16 conceded but with the focus on goals solely on Martinez we didn’t score many at all which lead to the dropped points at times.

 

In the Eastern Playoffs we played Miami and beat them 3-0 as Martinez added to his seasons tally with two.

 

The MLS Cup final was the last game of the save and Martinez was obviously on a mission to try and up his % as he hit his first hat trick which he was helped with by me leaving him on the pitch for the full 90 minutes.

 

The Atlanta fans weren’t treated to amazing attacking football this season but we won everything there was to win and the main aim was to up the % of goals Martinez got.

The Final Verdict

At the end of season 1 Martinez had scored 52% of the teams goals and it was going to be tricky to up that amount this season as the more goals the team has scored the less of an increase in the % each Martinez goals makes.

He played more games this season helped by our progress in the NACL but also with the better squad I was able to rest him earlier in games if he had scored and be more confident we could see the game out so he stayed fitter due to less game time and so was able to start more games.

 

He scored 56 goals this season and the team scored 96 goals in the season so for season two his % of goals scored was 58% so an improvement but we need to do the score over both seasons.

The team scored a total of 184 goals over the two seasons at a disgustingly low rate of 1.88GpG.

 

Team Goals Over Two Seasons = 184

Josef Martinez Goals Over Two Seasons = 102

Martinez % of Team Goals = 55%

I know how @samhardy likes to see the working out from the website so here is the exact % figure.

 

This brings this challenge to an end with a score that might be good or it might be terrible I have no idea but it sets a benchmark for others to try and beat.

Thanks for reading.

[Rich]

Great going there Fox, that tactic as well is pure madness, but worked well and I would say 55% is very good!

[Aaron Thornton]

Great going Mr Fox. You might have played the Burnley way, but at least the Josef Martinez fans out there got to see him score bucket loads. 

A great challenge and a great benchmark for us to aim for

Did you do any testing before attempting this? 

[FuddledFox]

23 minutes ago, RichD said:

that tactic as well is pure madness

The defensive tactic sort of evolved although I did similar in season 1 not quite to that extreme. It really only was effective because of the quality of the squad and it certainly wasn’t 100% successful as the 5 draws and 3 lost games show.

8 minutes ago, Aaron Thornton said:

Did you do any testing before attempting this? 

No, I had a plan when I started which mostly worked and then progressed as the career went on so by season 2 it was perfected. There will be other ways to do this challenge but that was the way I went with and time will tell if it’s the right way or not. The MLS probably wasn’t the best league to do this in as the teams are very evenly matched at the start and teams all have similar budgets so it’s not as easy to build an outstanding squad in season 1.

[broodje kip]

That’s a great score @FuddledFox. Certainly set a real benchmark for all of us there

[smoggy90]

Excellent score there mate, a very nice return from Martinez as well considering your setup.

[Paul186]

Good career and the top score in the challenge. 😁

[FuddledFox]

3 hours ago, broodje kip said:

That’s a great score @FuddledFox. Certainly set a real benchmark for all of us there

Thanks.

2 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

very nice return from Martinez as well considering your setup.

It felt a bit weird having to channel the inner Mourinho I never knew I had but it made for a different and fun challenge.

1 hour ago, Paul186 said:

Good career and the top score in the challenge. 😁

Thanks Paul.

[Rob]

I think this is an excellent score. Well done Fantastic Mr Fox

[FuddledFox]

15 hours ago, Rob said:

I think this is an excellent score. Well done Fantastic Mr Fox

Cheers Rob.